The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for heating and/or cooling a plurality of objects simultaneously at a plurality of different preselected temperatures. The invention is particularly applicable for simultaneously heating and for cooling a plurality of different chemical samples or biological specimens to different preselected temperatures, and is therefore described below with respect to this application.
There are many occasions requiring chemical samples, biological specimens or the like to be simultaneously heated to different preselected temperatures, for example in biochemical analyses, in measuring reaction rates of chemical reactions, and in determining melting points of different substances. The conventional technique for heating or cooling such samples is to provide a controlled temperature environment for each of the samples, such as a bath or an oven, or a part of an oven, maintained at the required preselected temperature. Such arrangements are expensive and inconvenient, particularly when there are a large number of samples, for example ten, twenty or even more, to be heated and/or cooled at various temperatures.
An object of the present invention is to provide a very simple method and apparatus for the above purpose.